[gentoo-user] Re: [OT] fast recursive local copy

[Nikos Chantziaras]

On 08/14/2009 05:47 AM, meino.cramer@×××.de wrote:
> Hi,
>
>   I am looking for a faster way to do a
>
>      cp -a r<thisdir>  <thatdir>
>
>   locally on one machine with one harddisk inside.
>
>   Is there a neat trick to accomplish this faster than
>   good old cp?

Nope.  Some people like to use pipes in hope to speed it up, something like:

   tar -c <thisdir> | tar -xC <thatdir>

but this isn't really faster and fscks up sparse files.

But if <thatdir> already contains some files from <thisdir>, then rsync 
would be faster than cp.  If not, stick with cp.